Baby Doc, Go Back to France

Last week I was glued to the television hoping to get good news about Haiti. After watching a local Denver reporter interview Karen Ashmore, the executive director of the Lambi Fund, I soon realized things are moving in the right direction. The Lambi Fund has done a lot to help the earthquake victims. Click here to read and view a video of the interview.

Viewing the interview infused me with new hope and a fervent desire to continue to donate to the Lambi Fund. Let’s face it, things are tough economically right now, and with two children in college and one two years away from being a freshman, I have to be very frugal. And no sooner had I celebrated the good news about what the Lambi Fund is doing in Haiti, than I got the bad news about former ruler Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s arrival in the country.

At first, I thought it was a joke, but much to my dismay it turned out to be true. I asked myself, why on Earth did he return to Haiti after a 20-year absence? Is he dead broke? He went into exile to France and lived a life of luxury. Why was he allowed to return? What will become of Haiti? What are his intentions? Based on the past, I am having a very difficult time believing his intentions are good.

Call me a pessimist, but I am convinced Baby Doc came back because he wants a portion of the millions of dollars poured into Haiti after the earthquake. I hope and pray that the Haitian people will wake up and demand that Baby Doc go back to France.

I am also hoping the international community will intervene and watch closely what Baby Doc will do. Haiti can’t afford more genocide. Is it not enough that thousands died under Baby Doc’s regime, the January 12th earthquake, and recently the cholera outbreak? How much can one country take?

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About Nicole Weaver

Nicole weaver is an award-winning author. Her first trilingual book Marie and Her Friend the Sea Turtle was published in 2009. Her love for languages and other cultures resulted in publishing the award-winning book, My Sister Is My Best Friend which was published in 2011 by Guardian Angel Publishing. My Sister Is My Best Friend has won the following awards:
2012 Creative Child Awards Program consisting of moms and educators has awarded this book the 2012 PREFERRED CHOICE AWARD
Kids Picture Storybooks category.
2012 Children's Literary Classics Seal of Approval
2012 Children's Literary Classics Gold Award
Readers' Favorite 5 Star Review
Her newest book , My Brother Is My Best Friend was also published by Guardian Angel Publishing, January 2014.

Nicole, yes, I wondered too whether Baby Doc, clever fellow that he is, decided to go back because he knows where the earthquake aid money is buried and now wants to get his hands on some of that loot.

Apparently, all the money he pinched from the people of Haiti has now run out, the result of living high on the hog in the style of Louis XIV over there in France.

I suspect too he might have made a mistake of monumental proportions by returning in the current climate, and might not have to use the return portion of his air fare … unless he makes his exit very soon.

Glenn Contrarian

Yes, Baby Doc needs to be buried under a prison, but…

…but I remember something I learned over the years – in times of crisis, sometimes the best one to make things better is an a**hole (or, in political terms, a tyrant).

Now before anyone starts heaving acidic vitriol in my direction, let me give a few examples.

There’s Vlad Dracula the Impaler – whose evil acts in real life eclipsed anything in fiction – who beat back the much more numerous Turks and prevented the Islamicization of the Balkans. Catholics (and protestants) have much to thank him for…and non-mainstream-‘Christians’ can rightly vilify him.

Stalin is probably the greatest mass murderer in human history – IIRC, his innocent victims outnumbered even Hitler’s. But if it weren’t for Stalin’s forcing much of the Soviet Union’s industrial might east of the Urals following the onset of Operation Barbarossa, we might all be speaking German now…and lest anyone think otherwise, the lion’s share of the Second World War was fought on the Eastern Front. In fact, the Soviets might still have won even if America and England had stayed out of the war…and if Russia had fallen before we crossed the Rhine, we likely would have been forced back to another Dunkirk instead of crossing the Remagen on the way to Berlin.

Hitler took a country in the throes of economic crisis during the Weimar Republic followed by a worldwide depression and made it an economic powerhouse, and along the way built the Autobahn, the precursor to our much-ballyhooed Interstate system.

The above dictators are the very worst humanity has to offer…but Vlad stopped the Turks, Stalin stopped Hitler, and Hitler brought his country up from total economic collapse to great economic power status.

What does this have to do with ‘Baby Doc’? He’s a waste of human flesh by all accounts…but is there anyone else in Haiti who could step forward and bring the country together? If Baby Doc could by force of tyrannical will unite his country and get Haiti back on the path to prosperity again, would that be worth it?

In so many words, it’s a deal with a human devil. In Stalin’s case, it was worth it. In Hitler’s case, it certainly wasn’t. Would Baby Doc be worth it? I don’t know…but nature abhors a vacuum, and if someone doesn’t step up soon, Baby Doc just might….

(P.S. – this is why I’m “Contrarian”)

Glenn Contrarian

STM – I hope you’re not near the floods. I figure you’re okay since you commented here, but it looks pretty rough over there….

STM

Nah, I’m safe but my brother in law’s business was affected for a while. Luckily, my Queensland family members in Brisbane all live in the southern-eastern suburbs and on the bay, so they’ve escaped it (although the bay doesn’t look too pleasant). Mind you, living anywhere in Brisbane is tough at the moment.

It’s going to be a struggle for a lot of people for a while to come. Economically, we’ll cope and we’ve had much less loss of life than Brazil, despte the flooding being on a far greater, almost unimaginable scale. At one stage in Queensland, which is a huge state, an area the size of Texas and California combined (or France and Germany combined) was underwater … three-quarters of the state. Now it’s spread to northern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania … it’s the La Nina weather pattern bring rain this side of the Pacific and dry conditions on the Peru/Chile side. We seem to alternate between that pattern and El Nino, which brings drought and fire.

Remember last year when we had killer bushfires in Victoria? We’ve just come out of 10 years of drought, and now this.

I feel really sorry for the farmers, who are among the toughest, most resilient people in this nation, but even they must be wringing their hands at the moment.

As for Baby Doc, last I heard he was in cuistody. I have no doubt at all – none – that’s he’s there trying to get some loot from the earthquake relief money.

I guess more questions have to be asked too about a lot that’s gone already, because it doesn’t seem to have reached the people on a large scale at this point, and that’s a year on.

Cheers Glenn

http://marieandherfriendtheseaturtle.blogspot.com Nicole Weaver

Hey Glenn,
You made some very interesting points. Thanks for your input.